George Bates, 82, remembers fighting in Korea as the 60th anniversary of the Korean War nears. Often called The Forgotten War Bates keeps a volume of photos, clippings and honors to remind him of his service.

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Sculptor Frank Gaylord of Barre with one of his models for the Korean War memorial he created in Washington D.C.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS FILE)Buy Photo

Frank Gaylord was an Army paratrooper in World War II who won a Bronze Star for fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Decades later, he tapped into that experience for his art.

The Barre sculptor was commissioned to create 19 soldiers for the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. As Gaylord told Sue Higby, executive director of Studio Place Arts in Barre, he got to know fabric from jumping out of planes, because when he pulled the parachute he looked back hoping to see fluttering, flowing fabric behind him.

“He became a student of how silk flows,” Higby said. That quality is apparent, she noted, in the crinkling of the soldiers’ ponchos in the Korean War memorial.

Attention to detail marked the career of Gaylord, who died last week in Vermont, less than two weeks after his 93rd birthday. He left a lasting impression on Barre, a community known for its sculpture thanks to the local granite quarries and the artists they attracted.

“He was a seeker. He wanted to understand the know-how of sculpture and everything,” said Giuliano Cecchinelli Sr., a fellow Barre sculptor who began working for Gaylord in 1965. “He was a man above any other, to tell you the truth. I could feel it that he would achieve. He was one of the most famous people that Barre ever had.”

The Korean War monument is undoubtedly Gaylord’s best-known work. That project provided him with what he called “the highlight of my whole life” when he watched the sculpture arrive on the National Mall.

“Looking back, I can see that it was my finest moment: To see your own work unloaded on the Mall, at the nation’s capital, with a monument that requires a sculptural solution,” the artist told former Burlington Free Press staff writer Sally Pollak in 2003 as he was about to receive the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Frank Gaylord looks at a photo of himself as a young man at work Saturday, March 28, 2015 in Barre, Vermont. Gaylord, who earned a fine art degree from Temple University in 1950, passed away Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at his daughter's home in Barre, Vermont. Joe Lamberti/Courier Post

Frank Gaylord at work on a sculpture of William Penn, unveiled in 1982 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of Pennsylvania. The statue is on display at Penn Treaty Park in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Image courtesy of the Gaylord family

Gaylord’s body of work included a piece depicting former Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso for her state’s capitol building, a statue of young, leaping ballplayers for the home of Little League baseball in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and sculptures of Vermont’s first governor, Thomas Chittenden, placed in Williston and Montpelier.

Studio Place Arts, Gaylord’s hometown gallery, hosted a career retrospective in 2015. The exhibition began with a conversation in which the artist told Higby he had a new project called GOGO – Girls Once Gazed On – more than a dozen graphite drawings of women he enjoyed looking at. Higby said Gaylord captured the power of ballet dancers, baseball players, religious figures and soldiers with equal skill.

“Strength would be one of the qualities that shows up in both men and women” in Gaylord’s work, Higby said. “He admired the human physique. I’m sure that he studied old-school dissection and understood musculature. He understood strength and resilience and grace.”

He possessed those qualities, too, Higby said. “He’s creative, feisty, stubborn, a person of great integrity,” she said. “He really did work that was far beyond the work that was being done here in Barre, very stylized, imaginative work. He really did set the pace in many respects not just for high-quality work but his ability to secure very competitive commissions.”

Sculptor Frank Gaylord examines his half-scale model for a sculpture of Thomas Chittenden, Vermont's first governor, at his studio in Barre, Vt., Tuesday, July 29, 1997. The full size sculpture is at rear.(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE)

He also had an ability to protect those commissions. He maintained the rights to his work, including the Korean War sculptures, and won a court case in 2013 against the U.S. Postal Service when the agency used the monument in stamps without his approval. Gaylord was awarded nearly $685,000 in the settlement.

Gaylord, who moved to Barre following art school in 1951, told the Free Press that he became attracted to sculpting as a 3-year-old growing up in West Virginia when his grandmother made clay animal figures for him. “I’d take it to her and ask her to make me another and she’d say, ‘I don’t have time to do it again. You do it,’” he said in 2003. “And here I am.”

Barre is thankful to Gaylord’s grandmother for showing him the way. “I was honored to know Frank,” Higby said. “He will go down in my personal memories as being an outstanding talent and just a remarkable personality.”

Cecchinelli, his fellow sculptor and friend for the past half-century, feels that way as well. “I was proud to have lived in his time,” Cecchinelli said.

Gaylord had no complaints about the way his career turned out. “I only have one life,” he told the Free Press in 2003, “and what I’ve done is the thing I love more than anything else.”

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck. Support local journalism in Vermont by downloading our app or subscribing to the Burlington Free Press.